Why didn't you do it?

I'm from Belgium, where you're not taken seriously until you're 30. In San Francisco, by 30, you're already a little old. Both are partly wrong, but the week I landed I felt more permission to move fast than I had in years. I believe there's real power in accepting that the choices you make now are the ones you'll answer for later. These are the things I keep coming back to.

Say you died tomorrow. What would you be sad you never got to do? It sounds morbid, but it's the fastest way I know to find out what you care about and what you were only doing to look busy. Most of us avoid asking it, because as long as you don't, every path stays open.
The map check. When I talk to people my own age in Europe the difference in mentality is substantial, and I end up asking them the same 2 questions. What's your long-term goal, and how does the job you're in now or the decision you're about to make get you closer to it? Most people go quiet, because they've never had to say it out loud.
Part of it is that Europe is very good at offering a safe path. There's a sensible sequence, and if you stick to it, nobody will ever be able to say you did anything wrong. While that's comfortable, you can follow it to the letter and still end up somewhere you never chose. When someone tells me about a promotion, a move or a course they're thinking of signing up for, I ask how it connects to where they want to end up, and often it doesn't connect to anything in particular.
Life runs in phases, whether you feel ready or not. The window for the moves that set up the next 10 years is a lot narrower than it looks from inside it. There's a stretch where you can take a real risk because you've got almost nothing to lose. Then you get a mortgage or a kid, maybe a title you don't want to hand back, and the same risk costs 10 times as much.
Don't leave it up to luck. Luck is real and it plays a big part, but the people I know who look lucky, up close, mostly aren't. They decided early what they were aiming at and then kept showing up in places where good luck could happen.
Make the plan. It's the boring part, which is why people skip it. Work out what you find important and how you want to be remembered, and be specific about it. Leave the job title out and think about your values and what you did for the people around you. Then let that drive your decisions, whatever your peer group thinks.
I forget all of this myself, constantly, and I think in the grind we all do. I've taken plenty of steps just because they were the next one available.

None of this is new, and every generation hears some version of it from someone slightly older who wishes they'd listened sooner. When I talk myself out of a risk or put off making a plan, I try to picture being asked this at the end.